want to settle my account and use the remainder for canned goods and cured pork.”
“I’m not sure there will be a remainder. This theodolite, as you call it, not being new, I can only allow you a few shillings above what you already owe,” says the shopkeeper, knowing the new railroad in the West will buy survey tools at a very good markup.
Thompson returns to the cold, unwelcoming streets with enough food stuffed into his pockets to last a few days. He regrets how the city has changed since he first travelled here in 1811. Then, Montreal was still a fur-trading centre as it had been for two hundred years. The tall ships of Europe off-loaded axes, pots, and muskets and exchanged them for pelts of beaver, marten, and fox, brought by canoes from the West. The North West Company was the city’s chief trading establishment and, at the peak of its power, its influence had stretched from Montreal across the continent and reached from desolate Arctic bays to the crowded ports of China.
Thompson remembers joining the North West Company in 1797. From the beginning, it had been a loose partnership of rugged French-Canadian voyageurs and fiercely determined Scottish and English fur traders. Together, these men were a brotherhood of explorers unlike any ever known. They searched the wilderness for profitable furs and established trade routes through the vast western plains, and in so doing laid the foundation for a future nation. There was Alexander Mackenzie, who in 1789 was first to plot the magnificent Mackenzie River from its source to the Arctic Ocean 2400 sinuous kilometres later and who, in 1793, was first to travel overland to the Pacific. There was Simon Fraser, who explored the upper reaches of the Peace River, established the first trading post in British Columbia, and who was first to map the course of the mighty Fraser River to the ocean, in 1808. These Northwesters were legends, and he, David Thompson, had taken his place among them as an equal.
In the old days, they didn’t mind being derided as “the peddlers from Montreal” by their rivals in the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). The Northwesters, led by Simon McTavish, were wealthy and spent lavishly, monopolizing the local economy and dominating the city’s social life. “Fortitude in Danger” they had hollered in a toast to the company at Dillon’s Tavern, their favourite meeting place. They were the lords of the wilderness and the rulers of Montreal’s fur trade.
The Northwesters’ victory had been hard won. Each side robbed fur shipments and burned stockades. Blood was spilled when HBC men met Northwesters along the fur trails. Canoemen were shot while paddling, and small settlements at the farthest outposts were left to starve when their caches of winter food were stolen. In 1817, the murderous competition culminated in small-scale warfare along the Red River. There, Metis of the North West Company and Lord Selkirk’s mercenaries and settlers, backed by the HBC, killed each other in pitched battles with musket and ball.
Now, almost four decades later, the battles are over and Dillons Tavern is no different than any of the city’s two dozen other taverns. The fur trade has moved north, back to Hudson Bay. Montreal has evolved from its roughness into the commercial heart of British North America. In the better parts of town it is crowded, and busy shops serve well-dressed ladies. There is gas lighting in the theatres and banks. Liveried servants and French waiters give the hotels the trappings of Europe’s finest. Ships from America and across the Atlantic continue to ply their way sixteen hundred kilometres up the St. Lawrence to reach the city. But now they bring fine china and expensive furniture and, for the return to Europe, fill their holds with lumber, nails, and wheat instead of furs.
The old man does not share in the new economy. His time has passed. His friends and supporters in the North West Company have long since died or moved on to other ventures after selling out to the Hudson’s Bay Company. He is not, and cannot be, part of the new prosperity. His heart is still with the vast and unexplored wilderness and with the quest to discover new places and new sources for the precious pelts of beaver and marten. He longs to exchange the desolation of the city for the hardships of the trail. He prefers the companionship of French-speaking canoemen and quiet Chipewyan guides sitting around an open fire under a bright cordilleran moon to the congested streets and the company of shopkeepers and merchants. He gladly would exchange blackflies and mosquitoes, paddle-weary arms, bitter cold, and bad food for the loneliness of his Montreal lodgings, but his old age and near blindness keep him prisoner in the city.
Few in Montreal’s lower streets know who he is. He makes little effort to be recognized. Some know him uptown in the financial district, but he is unwelcome there. He had forsaken the Hudson’s Bay Company to join forces with the rival North West Company. Now that the Hudson’s Bay Company has taken over, he is branded a traitor. Rumours persist, probably encouraged by the Hudson’s Bay Company, that he is untrustworthy and has betrayed the colonial powers by stalling exploration of the Columbia River. This, it is rumoured, helped the Americans successfully expropriate the rich Oregon Territory from British hands.
Near the docks he finds the stairway leading to his modest lodging. He ascends, placing each frail step deliberately before the next. His Metis wife, Charlotte, is waiting in an unheated room. He sits beside her on the narrow bed and between them they examine the meagre supplies he has brought from the store. This is not the first time they have been hungry. Over the years, Charlotte has shared the adversities of the trail with him, and she has known the hungry nights when the pemmican was gone and the game was scarce. Those hardships, even though time has softened the memory of them, are still more bearable than this. She knows how deeply it hurt him to pawn his precious instruments. On the trail, only he had been allowed to handle them, and she had watched him hold them as if they were more valuable than all the pelts they carried. She understands that his instruments made him more than just a fur trader, they made him a map-maker like Captain Cook. Using them, he was able to chart, with paper and ink, the rivers and lakes to the great ocean in the West. Paper maps are of little comfort to her now, and she is afraid this final suffering will break him and he will die soon. Then she too will die because she is old and cannot return to her people on the plains.
Still in his coat, the old man shuffles to the table underneath the room’s only window. A muted light penetrates the frosted pane and allows him to read his pen-scrawled journal. He rubs his hands together, then, taking up a quill, he makes a sharp jab to break the thin film of frozen ink in the well. He transcribes another coordinate from his journal into his latest map. Almost blind, he can barely write. The gentlemen who had agreed to pay for the publication of earlier maps have found more profitable enterprises, but Thompson is still hopeful. Perhaps if he can sell his maps and maybe even his journals, then Charlotte and he will be able to make do until spring.
David Thompson would survive this winter, and the next, and several after that, but early in 1857 he died penniless and in obscurity. He was buried in Mount Royal Cemetery, Montreal. Charlotte died three months later, and her body was placed beside her husbands. Their graves were unmarked.
At 7:30 a.m. the portable gallows was wheeled into position. Hangings were always conducted by 8:00 o’clock in the morning in London and the execution, like many in the year of 1783, was to be carried out near the place of the crime. Even though the event was still a half hour away, the market square was already in a festive mood. Jugglers and street musicians were plying their trade. Elegant coaches arrived and took up the favoured position nearest the gallows. Rooms overlooking the square were temporarily rented to those who could afford them, and ill-mannered onlookers leaned from dozens of windows. Street vendors sold buns and drinks. To one side a group of young rakes entertained the crowd with a mock hanging as they mimicked strangulation. Just before 8:00 o’clock red-coated soldiers marched in and cleared the way for a plain wooden cart with an open top and side-rail pickets. In
